Colin Currie
Percussion
“Colin Currie's athletic playing was as dazzling and persuasive as the work itself.”
The Guardian, October 2009
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Colin Currie Group Drumming (credit: Debbie Scanlan) |
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Colin Currie Group Drumming (credit: Debbie Scanlan) |
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Colin Currie Group Drumming (credit: Debbie Scanlan) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie & Hakan Hardenberger (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie & Hakan Hardenberger (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie & Hakan Hardenberger (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie (credit: Marco Borggreve) |
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Colin Currie |
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Colin Currie (credit: Jessica Griffin) |
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Colin Currie |
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Colin Currie (credit: Jessica Griffin) |
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The Colin Currie Group: Steve Reich's Drumming
INTRODUCTION
Steve Reich's Drumming is one of the most iconic masterpieces of its time. Inspired by Reich's percussion studies in Ghana in 1971, it is a theatrical and captivating showcase for percussion, offering a non-stop, 50- to 75-minute fusion of bongo drums, marimbas, glockenspiels and synthesised vocals. The young and vibrant Colin Currie Group - newly established by Currie to perform this specialist work following its successful London debut at the 2006 BBC Proms - offers audiences a highly-skilled and engaging interpretation of this rhythmic kaleidoscope of sound.
Following multiple sell-out concerts at London's Southbank Centre over two seasons, Drumming by the Colin Currie Group is now available for touring internationally. The group looks forward to their international debut at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, followed by a tour to Japan.
Film and Audio
Click here to watch a film from The Guardian about the Colin Currie Group as they prepare to perform Steve Reich's Drumming at Southbank Centre (April 2011).
Click here to watch a short film on The Colin Currie Group in preparation for a performance of Steve Reich's Drumming as part of the 2009/10 International Chamber Music Season at London's Southbank Centre.
Click on the link below to hear the interview between Steve Reich and Colin Currie, and hosted by Gillian Moore, that followed the Southbank Centre performance.
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PRESS QUOTES
Leo Chadburn in interview with Steve Reich, June 2011
Steve Reich no longer performs Drumming as he “would struggle to match the vitality and energy that Colin and his group put into the piece - they can take that as a compliment!”
The Quietus
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, April 2011
“Watching the Colin Currie Group performing Reich's early-Seventies landmark work Drumming, one is struck by the intense levels of concentration required to bring the 70-minute piece successfully through its various stages. Currie's 12-piece ensemble is exceptionally focused, and the result holds the audience rapt throughout its duration.”
Five Stars, The Independent
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, February 2010
“Held together by eye contact, ear contact, intimate understanding of the score and collective breathing, the performance was both aurally and visually exciting – a work of art and also one of craft at its most disciplined and alert.”
The Independent
“There was a real sense of occasion at this performance, partly no doubt because of the presence of expert percussionist Colin Currie and the group he has formed to play Reich’s music....
The Colin Currie Group did not put a foot wrong, blending from one sound‐world to the next with ideal subtlety and building quite a head of elation by the end.”
Financial Times
“This [performance] felt decidedly more intimate, taking the listener deeper into Reich’s sound world. And it’s not a world without the charm and nuance of the chamber music that more usually occupies the QEH, at least not when performed with this degree of finesse and moment‐by‐moment satisfaction from its participants.”
The Times
“This was a mesmerizing performance from the Colin Currie Group, which was highly appreciated by the Queen Elizabeth Hall’s capacity audience”
Seen & Heard International
“This was a mesmerising performance masterminded by Colin Currie… from all angles, a revelation”
Classical Source
Aberdeen, October 2010
"It was given pride of place on Saturday at the centre of the Sound Festival’s minimalist weekend in a mind-blowing performance by the Colin Currie Group.
To be able to sustain this level of complexity from such simple basic material was a tour de force for both composer and performers. As an experience in sound, this was a revelation but it packed a powerful visual punch as well."
Glasgow Herald
Perth Concert Hall, April 2008
“On Saturday night a new generation of musicians resurrected Drumming and brought it to Perth for a wholly different ‐and staggering ‐musical experience... Colin Currie put together an elite team of top UK percussionists and led them in a stunning, dramatic version of Drumming... young, fit, lean, fantastically musical and mind‐bogglingly virtuosic. In their hands, Drumming was a continuum in four parts. This had direction, powering through the multi‐bongo first section, beguiling the senses with the marimba marathon of the second, piercing the brain with the golden rainburst of glockenspiels in the third and culminating in an apocalyptic fourth section with everybody piling in.”
Glasgow Herald
BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, August 2006
“Reich’s classic minimalist masterpiece Drumming, [which] over 45 minutes traced an enthralling trajectory from drums to marimbas and finally to the shrill sound of glockenspiels, before wrapping up all three in one thunderous climax....the performances, from the nine percussionists, three singers and one flautist was a model of impassive elegance....there emerged from Reich’s aloof glittering patterns a kind of ecstasy, all the more moving for being so mysterious.”
The Telegraph
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FINANCIAL TIMES FEATURE
Percussionists move into the limelight [extract]
You could call it a big bang theory. For centuries, percussionists laboured at the back of ensembles, adding rhythmical texture or climactic flourish to instrumental works but, more often than not, silently counting beats. As one disenchanted musician once put it, 90 per cent of the time he was bored to death and the other 10 per cent of the time he was scared to death.
During the mid-20th century, however, attitudes began to change and there followed the gradual emancipation of classical percussionists who sought a more conspicuous role. Over the past 30 years there has been an explosion of interest in percussion instruments: they have found prominence in new compositions and as soloists in their own right. There is now a growing belief that percussion, and percussionists, will come to define the musical landscape of the future.
There were many catalysts for this change – influential research into African music, for example – but the first percussion composition to grab public attention was Steve Reich’s “Drumming” from 1970-1971. This piece came to epitomise early minimalist cool, but Reich had been inspired to write it after a period of study at the University of Ghana with the drumming master Gideon Alorwoyie. The score consists of a relay of phased rhythms: tuned bongos give way to marimbas and female voices, which themselves blend seamlessly into glockenspiels, whistling and piccolos before all unite for a reverberating chorus. Performances of the work have been rare, which makes this month’s concert at the Royal Festival Hall by Scottish percussionist Colin Currie and his group rather special – so special, in fact, that the composer himself will bear witness.
| “Percussionists all have different opinions about things but when it comes to Steve Reich we’re all on the same page. He’s written so well for our instrument, he knows the colours and how to build amazing ensembles. ‘Drumming’ is an absolute masterpiece.” |
“Percussionists all have different opinions about things but when it comes to Steve Reich we’re all on the same page,” Currie says. “He’s written so well for our instrument, he knows the colours and how to build amazing ensembles. ‘Drumming’ is an absolute masterpiece.” Performances of the piece last, on average, around an hour, depending on repeats, and within this time the piece develops a crescendo of giddy optimism and an almost dream-like transcendence. “Often percussion is criticised for having surface effects without profundity but ‘Drumming’ can really choke you up, it’s very powerful.” In the early 1970s, Reich and his ensemble presented “Drumming” in a somewhat ritualistic fashion – reports tell of kaftans and long beards – but Currie will forego any attempt at extraneous effect: “We wouldn’t be seen dead playing that piece in kaftans!” he assures me.
Laura Battle
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CONCERT PROGRAMME FEATURE
A View from the Platform
‘It’s a group devoted to the future of Reich’s music, to ensure that his music is performed to the highest level and in an authentic way,’ says Colin Currie as he explains the raison d’être of his recently formed ensemble. ‘Percussionists love Steve Reich; he’s really a guru to us.’ Currie’s use of the word guru seems pertinent given Reich’s almost messianic following among both musicians and audiences. ‘I think Reich fans enjoy the mellow beauty and trance-like quality of his music, his ability to control energy and his absolutely amazing ears for sound,’ observes Currie. ‘There is something very primordial about it. His musical language is unpretentious, but with an intellectuality to it. That’s very appealing.’
Reich composed Drumming on his return from an extended trip to Ghana in 1971, where he studied with master-drummer Gideon Alorwoyie. ‘He imported the music he heard in Ghana and translated it into a more westernized structure,’ explains Currie. ‘His own way of dealing with rhythms benefited very much from those studies. He was able to expand upon some ideas that he had already hit upon and as a result, it feels like a very worldly piece.’
Worldly it might be, but due to its length and technical challenges, Drumming is an ambitious piece to put on. Indeed, Reich formed his own ensemble in the late 1960s, Steve Reich and Musicians, in order to have his own pieces performed, regardless of their dimensions. As if in homage to the original, the Colin Currie Group is following the same course. ‘In 2006, I was asked by the BBC Proms to put together a portrait concert for Stevie Reich in his 70th birthday year,’ remembers Currie. ‘It seemed a good opportunity to use that concert as a launch-pad for an ensemble that would exclusively perform Reich, especially Drumming.’ He continues, ‘Even other seminal Reich works like Music for 18 Musicians can be played by new music groups, but Drumming requires a specialist set of skills.’
| ‘There is something very primordial about it. His musical language is unpretentious, but with an intellectuality to it. That’s very appealing.’ |
One of these ‘specialist skills’ is a compositional technique devised by Reich called ‘phasing’. Currie explains the concept in layman’s terms: ‘In a nutshell, phasing is where the ensemble has established a groove from which one of the players is instructed to accelerate the music they are playing, until they arrive at a different point in the phrase, thus creating a new pattern.’ The difficulties of this discipline, which Currie, with some considerable understatement, refers to as ‘quite tricky’ are exacerbated by ‘the physical and mental challenges of sustaining a pattern over a lengthy period of time’. Currie and his team are drawn to this challenge and to the textural landscape that Reich built from the distillation of the rhythms he encountered in West Africa. ‘The whole piece should sound seamless,’ Currie says. ‘It’s a series of kaleidoscopic changes, an exercise in transmogrification.’
Given its mathematical precision, is there room for interpretation in this music? Not in a traditional sense says Currie, but each performance has its own energy and is entirely unique. ‘The main thing is to establish a tempo that feels right and work out at what duration the piece works best,’ he says. ‘Versions of Drumming have varied enormously over the years, from 40 to 90 minutes.’ This disparity is possible because ‘a different member of the group is the focus of how the music moves on at any one time.’ He continues, ‘That player decides when to move to the next phrase. So we have to decide as an ensemble, what is a suitable way to let the music progress. In that respect, it’s a very democratic process.’ In rehearsals, the Colin Currie Group works together to develop a groove that suits them. ‘If a certain section is arrived at and it’s sounding particularly good, and these things can be hard to describe, we like to let that simmer’ says Currie. ‘Then at other times, there might be an energy taking hold of the group, so we might not wait around too long at each section. That’s one of the strengths of this piece – you can find your own solution to the music.’
This highly communicative approach to performing links Drumming to the spirit of traditional chamber music. Currie certainly sees it that way: ‘Together we can really get into detail and be assured of the quality every time’ he notes, ‘which is why people enjoy being in chamber groups of any sort.’ Currie’s line-up to perform Drumming brings together Synergy Vocals (Steve Reich’s vocal group of choice), piccolo player Roland Sutherland and nine talented percussionists, of whom Currie, although no elder-statesman, is the second-oldest. ‘It’s great to have a young team and to play with youngsters who have such get-up-and-go attitude’ he says. ‘Like me, a lot of them have been through the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition [four members of the ensemble, including Currie, have been winners of the percussion category]. The percussionists from that competition have always stuck together and looked out for each other. We have a good relationship, as friends and as percussionists.’ Currie obviously thrives in this collegial atmosphere and relishes the relatively rare opportunity to perform with members of his own tribe. ‘There is a like-mindedness’ he says. ‘We’re united in a real love of this music.’
© Intermusica. NOTE: This feature is available for use in programme booklets.
LINKS
» Colin Currie website
» Boosey & Hawkes
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